On Media

The David Johnson saga, cont.

By DYLAN BYERS

09/06/2013 05:33 PM EDT

HuffPollster has more on our bizarre story about the controversial pollster David Johnson, who repeatedly told Christian Science Monitor he had first-hand knowledge of the Joe Lhota campaign's internal polling while telling us at the very same time that he had been misquoted:

The missing word is "fraud" - Byers omits something important about that criticism and scrutiny. Four years ago, AAPOR "raised objections" when Strategic Vision, LLC, Johnson's company, failed to disclose "essential facts" about its methods, and Nate Silver questioned whether the company had been "actually polling anyone at all." Silver ultimately pronounced himself "almost certain" that the company "is disreputable and fraudulent." [AAPOR, FiveThirtyEight here and here]

Johnson promised legal action and cross-tabs... - In response, Johnson told a half dozen media outlets that he planned legal action against AAPOR and Silver. He promised an Atlanta journalist that he would "release all the crosstabs, and put an end to this right now." But neither lawsuits nor cross tabs materialized. Instead, Johnson's company, which had released results purportedly from over 170 live interviewer polls from 2004 to 2009, simply stopped releasing data, and ultimately scrubbed all mention of polls from its website. [National Journal]

Despite all this, Johnson is often quoted as a pollster, PR expert or Republican strategist in articles by outlets like Associated Press, Businessweek, and Fox News. Meanwhile, his quotes about the Lhota campaign's internal polling continue to make headlines, despite the fact that he told me he has no knowledge of the Lhota campaign's internal polling.